"Shirval: A Tale of Jerusalem" (1845)

Author:

McGuire, Patrick

Print source:

This short story appeared in The Aristidean,
March 1845. Whitman revised the story for
Specimen Days & Collect (1882), though he did
not use it. For publication details and revisions
see Brasher's edition of The Early Poems and
the Fiction.

In "Shirval" Whitman retells a story from
the New Testament, Luke 7: 11–18. The characters,
except for Jesus, are unnamed in Luke,
but Whitman gives them names and adds the
maiden Zar. Shirval is the young man who is
raised from the dead. Unni is the widow and
mother of Shirval, and Zar is Shirval's beloved.

Whitman avoids the name Jesus in his telling
by using words like Being, Presence, Man of
Wo, and Nazarine–the first three printed completely
in capitals. Whitman's portrayal of Jesus
emphasizes physical manifestations of the spiritual.
The hearts of the crowd throb at "the nearness
of an UNDEFINABLE PRESENCE, more than
mortal" (294).

According to David Reynolds, Whitman's
humanizing a tale from the Bible sets Whitman
in line with progressive literary practices of his
day. Whitman addresses that very issue in the
story when he defines a function of literature:
"It is the pen's prerogative to roll back the curtains
of centuries . . . and make them live in fiction" (292).

Reynolds also notes that "Shirval" is a
lighter, happier tale than Whitman's other fiction.
However, it involves much of the same
thematic interest in death and grief, only here
Whitman begins in gloom–"O Earth! huge
tomb-yard of humanity" (292)–and ends in
awe: widow, son, and maiden "knelt upon the
ground and bent their faces on the earth-worn
sandals of the MAN OF WO" (295).

Noteworthy also is Whitman's use of parallelism
in an emotional apostrophe addressed
to the Nazarene. The cadences are biblical and
not unlike those of the poetry.